Electronic counting, fate at finger tips
SANDESH PRABHUDESAI, PANAJI | 05 June 1999 12:37 ISTNo complications of opening of the ballot boxes, sorting out ballots symbol-wise, counting them with hand amidst confusion and then declaring the results after the whole irritating exercise of three to four hours.
It would be altogether a new exercise when the counting of Goa Assembly elections begins at 8 am tomorrow, at two counting centres district-wise, in altogether eight halls, in Panaji and Margao.
The counting of all the 39 constituencies in Goa would be now completed barely in four to five hours, thanks to the modern technique of simply opening the electronic voting machine and pressing the button to get symbol-wise number within seconds.
More than recording the figures, the counting personnel will have to spend time only in getting the EVMs to the tables, opening the seals in front of the counting agents and then getting the booth-wise result papers signed. The rest would be otherwise a matter of just five minutes.
Having around 10 to 14 counting tables in each hall, counting of each constituency would not go beyond three rounds, depending upon the number of polling booths in each constituency. Each round is expected to take not more than 20 to 25 minutes.
"We expect the speed to pick up only after the first round, which may take at the most one and a half hour, as the counting officials have to get acquainted with the modern counting system", says Kewal Sharma, the chief electoral officer.
Before breaking the seal of EVMs, the election office would spend around 30 minutes to sort out postal and service ballots, which have to be counted physically. The first EVMs is thus not expected to open before 9 am.
The whole counting process is also expected to be much easier with no complication of spending time on verifying the invalid votes, as the EVM leaves no space for any such vote. The pressing of the button has to register the vote accurately.
The efficient counting system would however leave only one major flaw of knowing booth-wise counting and intelligent candidates would roughly know the voting trend in each locality, considering size with handful votes each polling station has in Goa.
As number of votes are registered in each EVM, the recently introduced system of mixing all the ballots in a big drum and then taking it up for counting would be henceforth discarded, unless the election commission comes out with an alternate solution for it.
The local election office has also set up two district-wise computer rooms at the counting centres, where the detailed data of results would be fed and immediately transferred to the Nirvachan Sadan in Delhi from time to time. It would be then also available on its website (<www.eci.gov.in>) with continuos updates.
While the actual counting process is expected to be competed by 1 pm by cutting down seven to eight hours of manual counting, all the results are expected to be uploaded on the website by 3 pm, for the whole world to know.
